Dungeon Runs in Star Wars: The Old Republic

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Tension and cooperation.

By Nick Kolan

Massively multiplayer games like The Old Republic live and die based on how well they encourage different players to mingle and work together. Creating interesting group content isn't simply a reason to ramping up enemy health and damage, it's about requiring players to think about how they use their skills in conjunction with each another.

Good group content encourages not just cooperation, but occasionally rivalries and tension. And The Old Republic has hit on something golden in this regard. Take, for example, the first instanced group content for Republic-side players, the Esseles (which we have seen before, at least in part). The Esseles is a spacecraft designed to ferry characters through the vastness of space, and it just so happens that as you and your three allies (other players) are boarding the craft, so is an Ambassador wanted by the Empire. The Empire doesn't like to play nice, and soon landing pods are blowing through walls and droids are spilling into the ship.

Watch your step...and the giant asteroid gun.

The Esseles builds tension not through its encounters -- many of which are simple to suit the beginner-status of the Flashpoint -- but through choices. At two particular points, players are given story-bending options, and through the dice-rolling conversation system, only one player's choice will decide the outcome. This can make the group story sequences quite tense, because unless you're constantly communicating with your party members you have no way of knowing what those players will choose.

The Hammer, a separate Flashpoint set on an Empire-controlled superweapon, is more focused on the cooperative aspects of group play. The Flashpoint is set on a massive weapon designed to fire gigantic asteroids indiscriminately at planets, and you have to shut it down.

The Hammer introduces the idea of using player's crafting abilities to create quicker, less dangerous paths through the Flashpoint. Towards the start of the instance, we came across a drill pointed at a wall and a control panel that could only be operated by someone with a certain level of salvaging ability. One of our party members just happened to be able to salvage the drill. It switched on, drilled a hole through the adjacent wall, and made a path directly to the first boss.

A heightened degree of challenge on the Hammer.

The encounters in the Hammer are more complex. Even the very first boss in the dungeon, a massive droid, posed a challenge. It began simply, just attacking and occasionally shooting a laser which, to the best of my knowledge, couldn't be dodged. Then it spawned a smaller droid, which began to fly around attacking party members at random. This was taken down pretty quickly and the fight continued. Then it spawned two droids, which were destroyed. Then, as it neared its final fifth of health, it spawned about a dozen droids, and everyone's health began to fall quite quickly. The droids flew all over the place, randomly, making it virtually impossible for melee characters to chase them. Luckily my party was filled with ranged characters and we managed to scrape by.

Between the first and second bosses my party found an elevator that could only be activated by someone with slicing, another trade skill. Luckily, we again had someone capable of activating it, and we skipped what I assume was another section of trash mobs. I can't say for sure because, well, we skipped it. This brought us close to the second boss encounter, a trio of smaller droids. I was foolish and rushed in before I examined all three droids. I thought only one was a boss and the other two would fall quickly.

As I lay into the center one I saw the others begin attacking my party. This caused a lot of strain on our healers so I grabbed their attention and continued to attack my original target. That's when I noticed that his health was higher than before. One of the droids was healing the others. By this stage we were about three minutes into the fight. We switched targets trying to figure out which one was healing, but then that one began to gain health too. We switched to the last droid and took it down. The next two fell quickly.

One of these swords seems better than the other.

Beyond here we found the actual asteroid cannon. An immense stone sat to the left of a blue glowing bridge of light, suspended in mid-air. Suddenly, an alarm sounded and the bridge turned red. The barrel behind the asteroid began to glow, and a few moments later the bridge vanished. The stone was shot into space. That's when I noticed the immense planet at the other end of the barrel. This part of the dungeon, although functionally minor, added a lot to the overall experience. It put everything in context and made the final fight much more meaningful.

It was against a single humanoid, but became very difficult very quickly. He was able to draw us towards him or send us flying back. He spawned weaker enemies a couple times a minute, and would throw bombs on the ground that would hit like a truck when we got too close. We died. Then we died again. Then we died a third time, before we realized we could pull him into a larger area.

The Hammer provided a good amount of difficulty and while the story elements weren't as prominent here as they were in the Esseles, the ability to have a different experience based on which trade skills are present still made for an interesting dungeon run. The step-up in encounter complexity was also very promising, and I'm looking forward to playing future Flashpoints.